Holden man was part of Old Guard at JFK funeral

Friday

Nov 22, 2013 at 5:10 PMNov 23, 2013 at 5:31 AM

By Amanda Roberge, CORRESPONDENT

HOLDEN — Fifty years after John F. Kennedy was laid to rest, Silvio Annunziata of Holden can still feel the drums.

"They were beating so loudly that they made my whole body vibrate," said Mr. Annunziata, a member of the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment in 1963. The unit, known as the Old Guard, was positioned on Pennsylvania Avenue for the president's funeral.

In a recent interview, Mr. Annunziata recalled those somber days in Washington.

He said that when he wakes in the night, or dreams of that day, or remembers anything about that long-ago November, it is the drums that provide the background noise to the memory.

Drums aren't the only sounds he hears, nor the only vivid memory. He recalls the leaves rustling, the chill in his bones from a cold that started in his feet and radiated throughout his entire body, the graying skyline. This time of year, he said, can trigger the memories.

The anniversary of JFK's death, Nov. 22, is not the date that is ingrained in Mr. Annunziata's brain. For him, it's the memory of the days that followed, beginning with a truck ride in dead silence from his military base at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia within hours of the shooting, to Washington, D.C., and ending with a funeral on Nov. 25 that is now a part of his emotional muscle memory. It was an event so intense that it lies just beneath the surface of his psyche.

"That day is burned into my mind," he said, adding that after leaving the military less than a year after JFK's funeral — it was getting too sad, he said, and he had heard Taps too many times — he didn't speak of the event for well over a decade.

"At that time we were burying eight people a day, three days a week," said Mr. Annunziata, then in his 20s, the son of Italian immigrants. "It started to get to me."

He recalls the JFK funeral experience as surreal, with alternating feelings of grief and alarm, wondering if war was imminent. As arrangements were improvised and military orders were issued, Mr. Annunziata was posted, ultimately, in a spot that had once brought him some joy — providing crowd control during parades that honored and commemorated visits from foreign dignitaries.

The president and first lady Jackie Kennedy, he said, were like rock stars during those parades. They rode in a powder blue convertible and were received and cheered by the people.

But sitting among a stack of photos and memorabilia from his early military career earlier this week, shaking his head at the memories that for half a century have visited him with a melancholy that is difficult to express, the parades seem like a distant and faded recollection. It's the funeral that is on his mind.

From the horse-drawn caisson and the weeping bugle melodies, to the cannons that went off each hour on the hour during the days leading up to the funeral, Mr. Annunziata keeps the story of his involvement in the events of that late November 1963 close to his heart.

"Every time I see and read about it, on television or in movies, I think, 'I know as much as those guys, I was there,' " he said.

The famous picture of John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's coffin, he said, has a story behind it that not too many people know.

His unit's officer in charge that day, Capt. Ken Pond, was in charge of watching the young boy during the proceedings, at the first lady's request. As Capt. Pond saluted the late president, John Jr. did the same. Photographers caught the moment.

The Old Guard holds reunions each year in the nation's capital, and Mr. Annunziata recently attended, along with the remaining 30 men from his unit. In the years since his military service, he married his wife, Lynne, and became the father of five children. Now a grandfather of seven with a career as a purchasing agent at St. Vincent Hospital behind him, he reflects on his "15 minutes of fame" with reverence.

"It was a very significant thing, being a part of that," he said. "But still, it's a story I don't tell very often."